On-going
series: Crisis in the Caucasus - 2008
The Russian / Georgian Conflict and Its Impact on AzerbaijanWindow on Eurasia: Original
Blog Article

Vienna, August 26 ­ The Kremlin's claim that Moscow
has the right to unilaterally recognize Abkhazia ad South Ossetia
because of the West's recognition of Kosovo has left Serbia,
a traditional friend of Russia and the supposed victim of that
Western action, in a difficult position, one likely to drive
Belgrade ever further from Moscow and ever closer to the West.

In an essay posted on the Polit.ru
portal today, Sergei Romanenko, a senior scholar at the Russian
Academy of Sciences' Institute of Economics, notes that developments
in the Caucasus over the last month and Moscow's involvement
in and response to them has created real problems for Belgrade
(http://www.polit.ru/analytics/2008/08/26/rus_serb.html).

Serbia is clearly being driven
in three different directions.

(1) First, from a purely "logical"
point of view, Belgrade "should have supported the territorial
integrity of Georgia," a step that would have put it at
odds Moscow.

(2) The Serbian government is limited in expressing that view
because of Kremlin promises to help it recover Kosovo and Moscow's
supply of oil.

(3) Because Serbia has declared
its desire to join the European Union, Romanenko says, it can't
afford to take any position on Georgia, which would so directly
contradict "the positions Brussels and Washington have taken,
lest it slow its progress toward integrating with the West.

More generally, the Moscow analyst
continues, "the sharpening of relations between Russian
on the one hand and the US, the European Union and NATO on the
other raise questions about the ability of President Boris Tadic
to achieve the policy goals" he has announced. And if these
tensions grow, Serbia "will be forced" to make a choice,
something it has tried to avoid.

First of all, Romanenko argues,
"Serbia both economically and geopolitically cannot be oriented
toward Russia alone," a country with which it does not have
common borders and which is in the process of "self-isolating
itself" from the major countries of the world. In short,
Serbia needs Europe more than it needs Russia.

And as ever more people in Belgrade
recognize, Russia now lacks the leverage in major capitals to
do much for Serbia to recover Kosovo, however often Moscow says
otherwise. The Russian veto in the UN Security Council won't
do the job, and "many governments prefer not to support
the Serbian-Russian tandem."

On the one hand, they have their
own political reasons for not doing so, and on the other, Russia's
position is increasingly "contradictory ­ a 'no' to
the independence of Kosovo and a 'yes' to the independence of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia," a stand that "does not
elicit trust" from other powers.

Moreover, Romanenko argues,
Moscow's moves in recent days "will not help Serbia to insist
on its territorial integrity, neither formally and legally nor
in political practice," whatever Russian officials may say.
And consequently, "official Serbia has preferred to maintain
diplomatic silence" over the events in the Caucasus.

That silence, the Moscow expert
continues, in fact highlights "the growing difficulties
in relations between Moscow and Belgrade," problems that
were publicly reflected by the postponement of a visit to Serbia
by Sergei Shoigu and comments in the Serbian media about Russia's
predatory pricing policies for oil.

According to media reports,
he says, Moscow has "expressed its dissatisfaction that
Serbia and also Bosnia and Herzegovina apparently have sold arms
to Georgia. While Belgrade and Sarajevo deny this and regardless
of whether Russia's claims are true, the fact that Moscow made
such a statement shows that relations are not good.

Clearly, trust between the two
sides has broken down, a trend that was exacerbated Romanenko
says by the handing over of Radovan Karadzic to the Hague court,
something that generated "considerably more dissatisfaction
and anger in Moscow than in Belgrade," especially given
Moscow's failure to hand over to Serbia people Belgrade has charged
with serious crimes.

There are already many collateral
victims of Russian aggression in Georgia and the West's response,
but the undermining of "the historic friendship" between
Moscow and Belgrade is clearly one of the most unexpected and
quite possibly may prove to be one of the most significant, particularly
if it tips the balance in the Balkans further to the West.